To sail among the clouds
by AlessNox
Summary: The story of a little girl who loved Dragons. SPOILERS for HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2


As the only daughter of Red Horn the Fisherman and Freya Lightfoot, Valka was the pearl in her father's heart. He built for her a little sailboat painted with scales like a dragon, and by the time that she was ten years old, she was the fastest sailor on the island, sailing circles around her brothers as they rowed the fishing barge back to dock.

She would follow them when they set out in the morning, the prow of her boat plowing through the morning fog like dragon wings cutting through the sky. She named her boat Cloud jumper, and she spent hours sailing over the waters and avoiding her household chores.

When she caught a good breeze she would spread out her arms and close her eyes, and it almost seemed as if she could fly.

As she got older, she spent some of her time helping as a lookout on the boat. Some tried to complain about having a woman on board, but Red Horn stopped that talk by bashing his fists together. Besides, she was as light-footed as her mother, and she had no fear of heights.

One afternoon when the day was hot and sticky, a baby typhoomerang flew circles around the mast. Cutknot shot it down, and it got tangled on the top of the sail. Valka climbed up the mast and ran across the top to cut it free with her pocket knife.

"Why'd ya do that?" Cutknot asked as it flew away, "You should have killed it while it was at our mercy."

"A dragon has the same right to live as any other creature," She said, but the others laughed at her. They mocked her calling her a 'dragon lover', but she held on to her opinions, stubborn as most Vikings were.

.

Valka was fifteen when her father sailed with a full load of prime sturgeon to the town of Burke. They went because it was the time of their winter festival, and demand would be high. Also, Mother wanted to go to the market and buy some fabric.

When they landed in port, Valka watched from the top of the sail as the Chief of Burke came on board followed by his son Stoic the Vast. He was indeed vast, twice as wide as his father who was no small man himself. She wanted a closer look, so she put on her gloves and grasped the sail cloth between her hands as she slid down the sail, jumping the last few feet to the ground to stand at her father's side.

"And this is my daughter, Valka," her father said with pride. The chief nodded, but Stoic stood mouth open and stared at her without saying a word.

She caught sight of him often as she went out with her mother to trade seal skin for fine cloth and silver needles. He was always on the edge of the crowd staring at her, and when she got tired of it and confronted him about it, he said nothing at all.

That night in the big lodge by the center fire, the pair of minstrels, a man and a woman, sang the newest Viking love song. The couples followed in a dance. Valka stood, swaying to the music before going still. Her brothers had made it clear that a woman with her temperament was never going to find a good match. She would have scoffed at them if she didn't believe that what they said was true. There was no other woman like her on the island or in the town. She was too opinionated about things like solitude and dragons. No one would ever want to be her partner. She sat down on a bench and turned her face away from the crowd, and so she didn't notice that Stoic watched only her all night long. The next morning they sailed for home. She climbed the mast, to see him standing on the shore. She had seen him often, but had never heard him speak.

It was five months before they returned to Burke. Others were gathering in town to talk about the growing dragon menace, and of a meeting of clans further south. Red Horn was only concerned about getting a good price for the summer clam catch. He became more interested though when he heard of entire hauls being stolen off of ships by the flying vermin. That night the elders went to a private hall to talk, leaving the younger folk to gather in the great hall.

In the warm glow of the firelight as the musicians began to play, Stoic came over to where she sat and asked her to dance. She was surprised at how soft spoken he was for being such a large man. He was a good dancer, and a good singer too, as he proved when he took her up into the hills and sang the lyrics to the Viking love song in her ear. And with one thing leading to another, it wasn't long before they were married.

They had only been married a few months when Stoic went off with his father to the dragon council, returning injured and alone with a tale of how his father and the others had been killed by treachery and by dragons. Stoic became Chief, and the killing of dragons was his new ambition.

Valka didn't agree with this course at all. She questioned his councils and argued that dragons be spared, but the others yelled down her unpopular opinion once the sheep of the town began to be raided. Valka would climb on the rooftops in the morning and look across the sea, hoping for a sight of dragons flying over the water, but also hoping that they wouldn't come because if they came too close, they would likely be killed.

Although Stoic never heeded her words in public, he never asked her to change. He loved his fiery opinionated wife, as was evidenced by the fact that a few months later, she was with child. Although Stoic put no limits on her, others did. It was fine for the crazy wife of the chief to run all over the place before, but now that she was pregnant, she couldn't sail alone any more, if at all. And climbing on rooftops was not even to be thought of. "What if she should fall?"

Days and nights staying indoors next to the fire, took their toll on her, and she became more and more depressed. In answer, Stoic built her a new room high on the top of the house with big shuttered windows that could be thrown open to show the roofs of the entire city. She slept in the room with the window opened to look out at the sea, and there she gave birth to their son, who she named Hiccup.

The room became his nursery, and she stayed there most of the time, because the babe was small and sickly.

One evening, the dragons came in force to steal the sheep. Stoic had the entire town mobilized by now, with each person assigned a role from tower watchman to fire control. Valka opened one of the shutters and watched as the men pulled out their swords.

She closed the window then and ran out into the street, calling out to people to stop the carnage, but they all ignored her. Then there was a crash, and she looked up to see the shutters of her room in tatters. A dragon had crashed straight through into her baby's room.

Valkya's heart was clutched in fear. Her baby was there! What if it carried him off, or ate him. What if she returned only to find a crib on fire and the burnt remains of her son! She pulled out a knife and rushed in to slay the dragon before that would happen, then she froze, surprised.

The dragon held its head over the crib and Hiccup laughed as he patted its horn. When it saw her with the knife, it jerked back, and the tip of its horn cut a thin line on the baby's chin. Hiccup began to cry.

The dragon looked straight at her then, and she could see the intelligence in its eyes. She had never stood so close to a dragon before. She walked forward and placed her hand on its head. When she gazed into its golden eyes she recognized a kindred spirit. Although she had never before seen this dragon, she knew for certain that this beast held the other half of her soul.

Right then, Stoic burst into the room and snatched up their son. He was only seconds away from raising his weapons and killing this dragon. She made her decision in an instant jumping onto the dragon and letting it carry her away. She could see the shock on Stoic's face as they flew out through the window, but what else could she have done? The dragon flew with strong strokes rapidly bearing her away from Burke, away from her husband and her infant son. She looked back at the flames until the image of her former home was lost in the distance. Then she turned around just as the dragon rose above the clouds to reveal a gibbous moon. It shone bright illuminating the cloud tops as the tips of the dragon's wings dipped into the cloud. As she looked out over the clouds which stretched to the horizon in all directions, she felt like a child again, sailing across the sea on her Cloudjumper. She stood up on the dragon's back and spread out her arms realizing at last what it felt like to fly free.

She never looked back again.


End file.
